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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

The Peril of Adventist Education

We're offering them up to You again this morning.

Whether we're watching in our own homes or here in Your house, I'm praying that our hearts will be sensitive to Your Spirit.

I want to welcome you all on this June morning, whether you're watching from your living room, bedroom, wherever it might be, or whether you're here in the sanctuary.

This morning I've entitled my message, The Peril of Adventist Education.

And I want to address this subject matter across the generations because this is a community effort.

It is a faith communion focus, and it's important for us to stand where we are at.

When COVID-19 affected world cultures and societies, it put many things on hold, not the least of which was the typical delivery system for education.

You'd be proud to know that so many of our Adventist schools were actually succeeding, where many public schools were falling down, not only because of the quality and effort and dedication of the teachers, but because in the homes from which our children beckon.

There is enough structure and enough discipline for there to still be academic learning.

There are many places across this nation and probably across the world where such things were not in place, and the last 2 months of the academic calendar were a total washout.

But many of our young people continue to receive the blessing of a quality instructional moment.

Now unfortunately, the very best efforts of a teacher via Zoom or whatever other Internet meeting place was used, limits the kind of shaping, the culture development, the community, the ambiance, the environment of the classroom.

These things are a large part of who we are.

As we come into what is approaching soon to be the middle of the summer, many people are considering what Adventist education and education at large will look like.

Most places are planning to send their kids back to school.

Of course, the tide could turn in regards to which way this virus is affecting our society, and that could all be reversed.

This morning we have good news here in Michigan and in this county, that God is blessing us with a limited and a winning battle in the sense of this disease.

Now, I've identified 5 things this morning the place Adventist education in a perilous moment You need to understand That the delivery system of online education is not a sustainable delivery system for the ongoing ministry of education.

It's like a big boa constrictor called secular culture has wrapped itself around our homes, our churches, and our schools.

And every time we exhale, it tightens down.

And slowly, over the last 20 to 30 years, we've watched a loss, a steady bleeding of students and commitment to our schools.

I know because of my involvement in education in this community, my connection with different individuals and boards, I know that there were many parents in this community that were saying, in effect, if we did all of this virtually and so much more of it fell to our laps, why are we still being charged $500 a month to send our kids to a Christian school?

Well, the truth of the matter is every parent probably has a new appreciation for what the teachers are doing day in and day out, and that's good.

But the real fact of the matter is, is that a hybrid system where the parent is the, what we'll call the creator of structure, the designer of order in the home, the educational coach for all of that that was received through the Internet download system, whether it was live or whether it was a paper or a packet that was dropped off, changes the calculus of how we look at Christian education.

And in a culture where people are consumers, not covenant partners in the educational product, there's this idea that since I did more and you did less, I should pay less.

Now, this morning, I want to totally debunk this Because I believe at the end of the day, what's at stake is whether or not we still have the structure on the other side when COVID is no more.

And if we go to a place where a fraction of revenues are received, That means we will have a fraction of the teaching staff, dedicated professionals, because their lives will have to move on to other commitments.

And we could find ourselves in an even greater crisis of personnel and professional commitment to Christian education.

So I'm gonna take a moment here, and I'm gonna do something that's gonna be a little bit of a challenge for some.

It's, depending on where you are on all of this, wouldn't it be nice if we could get our news without filtering?

I want you to think about this for a moment.

Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to go from this end of the spectrum over to this end of the spectrum to really figure out what is true?

And the problem why I'm setting this up like this is because I'm about to do something to challenge some people.

I went into a grocery store the other day, and when I made my way past the produce segment, I was back near the dairy, and somebody had very inconveniently parked their cart in front of the egg section.

Now I wasn't there to buy eggs, so it didn't really affect me, but as I rounded the corner around the organic produce, I looked just in time to see somebody taking their toe, reaching out to a cart, and moving it out of the way.

I thought, okay, there's a relevatory dynamic going on here.

That was an action that explained a lot about how that person feels.

A little later in the store, I happened to be right in an encounter with the same person in the frozen food section.

And that same person, who had so delicately distanced himself from what we might call the more untouchable parts of the grocery cart, grabbed onto the same handle that dozens had grabbed onto before and that I was about to grab onto and opened the frozen food section and got his stuff.

I have 5 points I'm gonna make this morning.

And 1 of them is destined to make anybody here uncomfortable.

Now if I didn't have to filter all my news, I wouldn't have to be over on this side thumbing my nose at all good hygiene in the midst of a pandemic, and I wouldn't have to be over here in a cave where I never come out and somebody drops my food off on the porch and I don't touch it for 24 hours.

I'm going to read you something that's very important.

As far as I can tell, it's not flown through.

It hasn't been delivered through the left or the right.

It actually comes from the New England Journal of Medicine.

And I'm doing this for a reason, and I'm going to tell you the reason before I read it.

Because I do think we're going to have to learn how to live with this disease.

And everybody has a right way of approaching it.

At the same time, it's my job to make sure that the contagion of paranoia does not run over all the other considerations that a society must embrace in order to be a functioning, focused, successful group of people.

In other words, I've watched, heard, seen, whatever, across the spectrum of people who are relating to their children, like this is the bubonic plague of the 1600s, and fear is dominating the directives.

Now I think we need to think about the long-term psychological and emotional consequences of relating to this like this.

Because if a generation from now we have a nation of completely traumatized, developing individuals, Where will the substance be that says, we will utilize our right minds and we will make decisions based on what we understand to be fact and truth?

Now, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we should be wise and careful.

The doors in this church are opened by deacons or left open.

You don't need to touch anything in the public spaces of this church.

You're sitting 6 feet apart from each other and for what other dynamics of protection you put in place, those are both strategized and carefully designed to make sure that we're not thumbing our nose, and we're also not acting like we won't be able to come out and interact.

Why am I associating this with Christian education?

Because statistically, the safest group of people in America are the ones that will need to be sitting in a classroom.

And how we train our children either gives them confidence to face what's coming with intelligent, reasoned, prudent perspective, or it psychologically reduces and prepares them for the mark of the beast, which the lever will be fear.

Now my Bible says, for God has not given us a spirit of what?

Fear, but a power of love and of a sound mind.

And I say, Pastor, you're taking a long time to get to your point.

Lead author is a professor at Harvard University New England Journal of Medicine dated June 3 Now these folks had written an article about the universal masking in Hospitals in the kovat era and people were using it to basically say, mask are worthless.

But there are a few sentences in the follow-up to the original article that I want to read to you.

A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact.

The risk of transmission among household members can be as high as, get your number, what do you think the risk of transmission in your own house is?

Whereas the risk of transmission from less intense and less sustained encounters is below—get your number—their number is 5 percent.

This finding is also borne out by recent research associating mask wearing with less transmission of SARS-CoV-2, particularly in closed settings.

And here's the last sentence of the article.

We therefore strongly support the calls of public health agencies for all people to wear masks when circumstances compel them to be within 6 feet of others for sustained periods.

Now, if we can undo the subject line from the radical right and from the liberal left, we can come to a place where we actually engage society knowing that the overall transmission rate for this is a function of intensity, frequency, and duration of contact with someone.

Is that I'm never going to find a person here who tells me I'm afraid.

The reason I'm doing this is because I'm afraid.

At the same time, you are going to find some people who suggest there's nothing to be concerned about.

What my hope is when this is all said and done is that there's a group of people who are careful that they're not mere reflectors of what we all know to be compromised news sources that data can still direct and that we can actually make a forward progress without fear dogging every step.

So the statistically least likely people to succumb to this virus are 17 years old and under.

We need them to be more careful about how they're conducting themselves.

But we also need to be exceptionally careful that we are not purveyors of paranoia in such a way that little kids, as was brought to me attention, have to ask their parents' permission to give a middle-aged relative a hug.

If that level of concern exists, then probably putting them in positions where the natural expression of a young and affectionate heart ought to be Received and given, probably we ought to avoid the environment completely, lest we constantly reinforce the idea that death is waiting to drop upon us around every corner.

I've had a book on my shelf for a long time called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.

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The Peril of Adventist Education

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